Notes from Last Night's Meeting and ETSY GRANT!

What a fun night!  There were 50 people in attendance at last night's meeting and we covered a ton of topics pertaining to our team (which now has 181 members!)  Thank you to everyone who came to brainstorm with us.  Those of you unable to make it, feel free to add your two cents on the blog or discussion boards.  I'll try and go through some of the highlights:



We decided to change our team name to "Handmade In Vegas."  The problem was that by using "Etsy Does Vegas," we would have to get Etsy Admin's approval before using our team name at any of our events or advertisements because it uses their trademark name, "Etsy."  To avoid any undue hassles and cut down on red tape, we're just changing the name to the second most popular choice from the vote.  That will soon be reflected here on the blog and our other sites as well as I update the graphics.  Whether or not we want to change our team tag to reflect this is up to us.  We could very well stick with the tag "etsydoesvegas team" instead of switching to "handmade invegas team"  It's just a technicality at this point but may be confusing for Etsy admin and new members.  Leave a comment to chime in on this.

We also had a ton of people sign up for leadership roles.  I'm spending today contacting everyone who signed up with instructions of how to proceed.  In the next few days, there will be a "Team Leadership" link in the sidebar with the contact information for all the leaders so you guys can know who to go to for different issues you may have. We still have leadership roles available and if anyone wants to volunteer, please let me know.  These are the available positions:

Craft Fair Team Leader (look for good venues, be familiar with permits needed, delegate responsibilities)

Sponsor Liason (find businesses to provide team discounts or provide direct money or product contributions)

Member Spotlight Leader (do a weekly blog post featuring a team member's blog)

ArtsWalk Leader (responsible for running - or delegating - the team table at the monthly ArtsWalk event and collecting vendor fees/taxes at the event.)

Area Meetup Leaders - We have a leader for West Vegas, but would love volunteers from the Henderson, NLV, Summerlin, Boulder City and Pahrump area to volunteer to host local meetups.

Monthly Meeting Coordinator - helps us find meeting locations and determines the topic/theme of meeting

Discussion Board Leader - monitors our discussion board for abuse and helps answer questions posted there.

Craft Swap Leader - coordinates periodic swaps between members of crafts - just for fun.

Your Choice - if you have something else you'd like to head up, feel free to volunteer!


We held a raffle at the event and raffled off assorted items from team member shops.  Doing this, we were able to recoup all the costs already spent on setting up the team (domain fees, promo items, organizational supplies) and had enough left over to purchase our new domain, www.HandmadeInVegas.com.  I hope to have a raffle at each monthly event to help us keep some money in the kitty.  It's only a dollar a ticket and there were some great prizes.  The grand prize being featured for a month on the homepage of our website underneath my welcome.  This is the page that everyone coming to our page for the first time sees and having a highlight there will be great publicity.  This month, Tiffany at Dandiliontif won and we will soon be publishing her shop highlight.  This feature is going to be available only as a raffle prize so if you would like to be elegible to win it, you need to participate in the raffle at our meetings, or mail in money for raffle tickets in advance to be entered.

We have decided to create a panel to "jury in" new member applicants.  Three of my team leaders will be discussing (using feedback from the entire team) what the criteria should be and managing new applicants.  More on that later.


For now, we will continue to not have membership fees or participation requirements.  However, more active participants will be rewarded by more exposure on the team blog.

We will hold at least one general team meeting a month.  (UPDATE) We'd like to hold in on the 3rd Tuesday of each month.  However, locations will vary to give team members around different parts of Vegas a chance to better participate.  The location of our next meeting is still being determined, but please mark your calendar for Tuesday, June 15th at 7pm.  We know that by having a set date, some of you will not be able to participate, however, it's easier for the team in general to participate if there is a consistant meeting date/time from month to month.

We've already starting planning our first craft show!  Please see Robi's post for details.  She will be the coordinator for this event, but is looking for lots of help.  It's a fantastic location, and great opportunity.

And the best news of all?  I got an email from Etsy this morning in response to my grant application.  We've been given a grant for team business cards and fair promo items.   Hopefully, I'll be able to distribute these at our next team meeting.  More information on these later, but it's great news for us and the grant totals $150.

I'd love to hear everyone's comments about what they thought of the meeting and other highlights in the discussion I haven't mentioned.  There is going to be a lot of scuffing around for the next few days as new team leaders get set up and we get rolling on some of our team goals.

And thanks to Kathy Wheeler (Angels Soap) for taking some pictures from the event!